The actor has appeared in Broadway before in a 2006 production of the play “Three Days of Rain,” which also starred Julia Roberts and Paul Rudd. Cooper told Deadline that his new show, “The Elephant Man,” was particularly a passion project for him.

“I can’t believe it,” he said of the show. “At the Booth Theater where it originated, playing a guy that is the reason I became an actor… it was that movie, when I was a kid. ‘The Elephant Man.’ John Hurt. That was the crystallized moment, where I thought, ‘Oh, I really need to do this for a living.’” Hurt earned a Best Actor Oscar nomination for the 1980 film.

So far, Cooper has received mainly positive reviews, with Guardian critic Alexis Soloski writing that the actor’s “portrayal at first seems tiresomely showy, the kind of acting that demands the audience acknowledge and applaud each drop of sweat trickling from the thespian brow. But after a scene or two, he settles into the part and he settles in very nicely… If Cooper doesn’t eclipse John Hurt in David Lynch’s film version, he gives a bravura performance and occasionally quite a moving one. He might as well clear trophy space on his mantel now.”